The 7-month-old innovation lab will launch three pilots this fall as part of its new consulting services. Greg Godbout, the executive director of 18F, said the organization now has 100 employees, up from 14 in March, and cut the time to hire down to about eight weeks.

Katrina McFarland, the assistant secretary of Defense for acquisition, said senior officials review solicitations before they get Milestone A approval to move into the technology development phase. This type of analysis had been missing previously or only done after it was too late.

A new survey by the TechAmerica Foundation found civilian and Defense technology spending over the next five years will go flat. Federal IT managers say the lack of new money means innovation and upgrades will slow or even stop.

Three agencies launched the Big Data Challenge
Wednesday asking for ideas to bring together
disparate data sets that help agencies meet
their missions better. The contest is part of
the administration's national big data
development effort. The TechAmerica Foundation
also released a new report to help agencies
understand and use information more effectively.

The government's IT budget hasn't been squeezed this hard since Forrest Gump was on the big screen in 1994. In the next five years, agencies will focus their spending on mission-critical technology. They're also finding ways to save money though nontraditional contracts and IT consolidation, a survey by the industry group TechAmerica Foundation found.